


These Pills Don't Relax Me

by heartshapedcookie, heereandqueer



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: BUT IT GETS CUTE AT THE END, Hallucinations, I promise, M/M, Okay so here we go, Pill Usage, Vomiting, and a bunch of flu like symptoms so sweating and muscle aches and that kinda stuff, so warnings for:, this is a withdrawal fic, tired boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-04 00:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcookie/pseuds/heartshapedcookie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/heereandqueer/pseuds/heereandqueer
Summary: Ethan decides he's going to quit his pills cold-turkey, and it ends up being a lot harder on them both than the boys thought.+ read tag warnings before reading





	These Pills Don't Relax Me

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to y2k pop hits while writing this, if youre interested in how serious i take writing

Ethan was done with the pills, he was truly and completely done this time. He was going to quit them once and for all. He was tired of the familiar weight and jingle of them in his pocket, and of the haunting sound of the plastic cap popping off. Wanted the imprints from where he presses down to get the cap off to fade completely this time, and not come back. He wanted the dry mouth and the shaky hands to finally ease up. He even wanted to try to eventually get on a normal sleeping schedule. (That last one was a long shot, but he could dream.)

The handful of doctors Ben had called for him all heavily advised him to bring Ethan in, to let them give him a prescription for some semi-opioids. Both of the boys knew what that would lead to. Ethan would have to actually go to the hospital, and once there they would run tests on him, to see how much of a prescription to give him, and once they saw him… he was bound to get placed in their care to watch him. Hospitals meant tests, and tests meant needles. After the incidents of the unspeakable day, Ethan’s found a new fear of needles near him, a crippling-instant-panic-attack fear of them. So instead, Ben (begrudgingly) let Ethan talk him into doing this at home. 

For the first eight or nine hours Ethan was hopeful, that maybe this mystery cocktail of drugs he had been taking for a couple of years time now wasn’t actually as bad as they had made it seem. His degree from MIT that hung on the wall could be heard laughing at him later though, as around hour eleven it started to go downhill. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up, he had jinxed himself. 

It was gradual at first, headaches and shaky legs. These weren’t things that he hadn’t dealt with before, and he had even attempted to take a small nap to try to hit reset on his body, but as the clock hit  _ 2 _ am his body had completely revolted. Ethan found himself head down in the toilet emptying what little he had from earlier that day. Ben had officially called out of work for the next day after he had gotten Ethan some water and managed to sit him up. 

The last thing Ethan wanted right now was Ben to see him like this, but every time he brought this up to him Ben was quick to quiet him down. The thought of leaving his side hadn’t even crossed Ben’s mind, nor would it the rest of the week in fact. Ben was here for everything, every up and every down. He knew what he was getting into, and was ready to help his boyfriend out any way that he possibly could.

Ethan could feel tears filling his eyes as his fingers gripping the bowl of the toilet, dry heaves shaking his entire skinny frame. He had vomited up every ounce left in his stomach, and the acid he had puked up last was burning the inside of his throat and his nose. The only thing he wanted to focus on was the soft circles of his boyfriends hand on his (sweat soaked) shirt, but his head felt too full and heavy. 

He got a burst of energy after a couple more minutes of this, and managed to shove his body up and over two feet to the bathtub. Ben sat back a bit so he didn’t crowd him, but stayed close in case he needed to puke again, or fell, who knows. Ben just needed to be there at his side.

Ethan wasn’t a short guy, evened out at  _ 5’10 _ , so it was a squeeze as he slid down into their empty bathtub, the back of his neck feeling like it was on fire as he rested it back against the chilling ceramic. It felt good on the outside, his skin was itching him and the sweat dripping down along his hairline let him knew he was in fact overheated. But on the inside, Ethan was freezing. His bones felt like ice under his skin, a deep chill that not even the hard shivering he was experiencing could shake it out of him.

Ben was back at his side before he even fullya laid back, his hand going to rest on his knee softly. The thing was, Ethan did  _ not  _ want to be touched right now, at all. He jerked his knee away, pumping it slightly against the other side of the tub with a wince. Every inch on his body felt like it was bruised, like if the window in their dimly lit bathroom was open that even the cold New York air would hurt him to his core. The movement was way too fast, everything in his body rejecting the sudden switch in position and he was sent leaning his top half over the edge of the tub and trying not to gag on nothing again. His throat hurt so bad that even if he had anything left to upchuck he’d fight against it with every bit of fight left.

He successfully managed to not puke on the floor, and slipped down more into the tub so that his head was barely peeking over the edge now, going slowly this time so he didn’t get the same reaction out of his body as before. Eyelids were heavy but he forced them to keep fluttering back open as he watched Ben brush his bangs back. On any normal day he would have smacked his hand away and moved them back into his eyes but now he let him move them, pressing a cold rag to his forehead. 

Ben could hear Ethan’s teeth chattering but even so he leaned into the coolness of the washcloth, his eyes slipping shut completely now without a fight against it this time. He wanted nothing more right now than to scoop Ethan up in his arms and bring him to the hospital where they could try to make this easier for him, but in reality he knew Ethan would see that as worse than what he was currently going through. He’d endure these monster flu symptoms any day if it meant he could stay as far away from the hospital (and the nightmare inducing needles and syringes) as possible. 

Things were steadily this awful for a few more hours, Ben did eventually end up carrying him to bed when he had nearly passed out in the cramped bath. He had been stripped of his pajama pants and soaked shirt, but insisted on pulling up the huge comforter to his chin. He was in no way sleeping, only occasionally would he start to doze off before his body jerked him back awake for no reason other than how shitty he was feeling. Every time this happened, Ethan seemed to get more and more worked up and irritated. It was totally justified, as he had used up everything in his body, tired and dehydrated, he needed to sleep, to start as fresh as he could after a nap. It was the only thing either of them could think of to make him feel better.

For once he wanted to sleep, that’s all he wanted to do right now and he couldn’t, his body wouldn’t let him. One of the times he was jerked awake by his body begging for the familiar high of his unknown drugs, he had just about enough of it. That’s when the tears started. Quietly, the only water left in his body started to fall from his eyes, dampening the pillow under his head. Following that his shoulders had begun to shake in a way that Ben could tell wasn’t from the shivering even from where he was sitting on the other side of the bed. 

“Oh Ethan…” Ben whispered, mostly to himself as he pushed up (careful not to move the bed too much) and moved a hand to grab a tissue to clean his boyfriends face from the salty tears. “Come on, you should take another drink.” His lips were beyond cracked, and if he was crying now he was bound to get even more dehydrated and while Ben wasn’t a doctor he figured it was best to get some water in him before that happened. Maybe that would save some hurting later on. At least he hoped it was helping.

Ben helped him sit up enough to gulp down some water, hoping and praying that it would help anything at all. He got the tears to stop for a while, and Ethan had closed his eyes for about half an hour before his whole demeanor suddenly flipped. He had gone from frustrated to desperate. 

“Ben, Ben please. I know where I hid some more pills when we threw them out. Ben, I need them, I can’t do this-” Ethan could barely hold himself up on his elbows to talk, and his face was so full of fear. “Please, Benj please I need them, I’m so sorry- I can’t do this, I can’t do it.”

He was rambling now, eyes trained on Ben’s tall frame as he watched him get up and come around to his side of the bed. He thought for a second that maybe he had gotten his way, that Ben was going to go get the small ziplock of emergency pills Ethan had (stupidly) hidden inside one of their old cracked mugs in a kitchen cabinet. But of course he didn’t, instead he just sat down on the other side of him, gently laying him back and tucking him in.

“Ethan you know I can’t do that. We talked about this before, remember? You told me not to give into any of your begging.” Ben’s tanned hand covered most of Ethan’s sunken cheek, thumb brushing against the light freckles under his eye as he spoke clear and soft. He didn’t want to rile Ethan up any more than he already was, and he was glad that the begging stopped after that for a while. Ben needed some time to calm himself down as well, as he knew he couldn’t trust himself to stick to his word, and if Ethan had looked at him like that again he might have actually given in too quickly in that moment. He wanted his pain to stop, he wanted it so badly. 

 

\---

 

The next day was similar to that one, too fucking similar. Ethan went from puking to resting to begging to crying and back. A horrible cycle, not just for Ethan to go through but for Ben to have to watch. He felt like he was supposed to sit there and watch his boyfriend go through every horrible thing a human body could, without any tools to help his suffering at all. It was torture to him, he felt so useless. He was sitting outside of a glass case and watching his boyfriend body take him down from the inside out, he had the best  _ fucking  _ seat in the house. Lucky him.

Finally around the third day mark since they had started this withdrawal process, Ethan had fallen asleep for real. He was snoring and everything. He didn’t exactly look peaceful, but it was enough for Ben for he was just beyond happy that his boyfriend was finally getting some rest. 

He wanted to use his laptop, wanted to google something,  _ anything _ , that he could do to ease some of Ethan’s pain. A problem with that was that he didn’t want to wake up Ethan with his typing and the bright glow of the screen, so he moved to the living room. It had been a couple of hours, he had two notebooks, twelve tabs, and was on hold with a doctor from New Mexico at the moment, when he heard a shout from their shared bedroom.

“Don’t- Don’t shoot!!!” Ethan’s scratchy voice was heard clear across their small apartment, and Ben’s laptop went flying to the floor as he darted to the room. The crash of the electronic would have been worrisome if he cared, but right now he just needed to get to Ethan.

He was shocked the door didn’t smack into the wall and leave a hole as he pushed it open so hard, frantically looking around for any signs of danger. Upon seeing no one else in the room, his eyes settled back down on his extremely pale boyfriend in bed. He looked like he had seen a ghost (or maybe a mirror), and the fear in his eyes was something that Ben had never seen before and hoped he would never have to see again. The look of pure terror, the stuff movie actors work years on trying to perfect. All color had drained from his face, even his lips were the palest blue he’d ever seen on a living person.

Ben was at his side, hands pressing down onto Ethan’s shoulders as he thrashed and yelled some more. He was seeing something, someone, Ben couldn’t. He was seeing that day, those cops, the guns in his face, all over again. Ben knew hallucinations were a large possibility with how little Ethan took care of himself, added on top of the fact that they’re doing the withdrawal at home and not in a hospital that would have ways of easing this for him. Stupidly he thought maybe they had passed that point, that they were in the clear. But much like Ethan at the beginning of this, he was a fool for thinking that.

Ben moved across the room to the bed, making sure that Ethan could see him and even made sure his hands were visible to the scared boy. His extended hands moved to his shoulders, trying to hold Ethan down and keeping his voice as steady as he can. He was doing his best at keeping it low so that Ethan would have to match his volume in order to hear him. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to yell, frightening Ethan even further. 

“Hey, hey it’s not real. Ethan, baby it’s not real. You’re seeing things, I promise you’re safe. I’ve got you, I’m keeping you safe.” These promises began to sound like a mantra to Ethan, his hands moving from the bed sheets he was nearly tearing a hole in with his fingers to hold onto Ben’s forearms as he began to try to steady his breathing out. 

It felt like hours, but only minutes had passed as Ethan laid himself back down, thankful when Ben crawled in next to him. Everything was hurting, aching. He wanted to claw at his skin until the pain of it tearing took away from the deep throbbing of his muscles. But he had managed to shove that feeling down every time it reammerged times before (though it got harder as the time ticked on).

Ethan was far too exhausted, both mentally and physically at this point, to feel embarrassed as Ben used a tissue to wipe his runny nose and tear streaked face, only closing his eyes as he pressed his face further into his pillow. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ben’s soft voice was the only thing that brought a good warmth to his body, and if he had the energy he would have smiled from it. He knew he could have said no, could have just not answered if he really wasn’t up for talking. Ben would have understood, but he wanted to tell him. He wanted him to know what he saw.

“They were.. They shot you and you.. There was so much blood, and i was so scared. It felt so real.” It still felt all too real, but it wasn’t. He knew that. It wasn’t real. It was not real. Ethan took a second to try to swallow, his dry throat rejecting the idea but he forced the lump down anyway before continuing. “I was next, but I didn’t want to leave you…”

That’s as much as he could say, fresh tears breaking through and wetting his long eyelashes. He had yet to open his eyes, knowing that if he got the strength to look at Ben he would only have been met with a sad look that was going to break his heart (that was currently beating so hard in his chest he was pretty sure it was making him nauseous again. Yeah, he definitely felt nauseous again.)

Ben had been reading an article earlier about the  _ ‘horror stories of drug withdrawal’ _ , and the girl telling the story had a quote that read  _ “You will never know what it is like to pray to God to kill you in your sleep.” _ All that was going through his head was if that’s how Ethan was feeling right now, because if he was in his place he knew for a fact he would have hit that point a day ago. 

He didn’t say anything, knowing Ethan wasn’t in the right place for real a conversation about this, and that all he needed right now was to be more comfortable. Ben knew if he showered that he would feel better, if he got the sweat and the tears cleaned off of him, but he also knew that there was no way in hell that Ethan had the energy to stand up long enough to shower. So he decided on the second best option.

It only took him a couple of minutes to get the bathroom picked up and the warm bath water running, having felt Ethan’s forehead before and found that his fever was coming down by now and still hadn’t been able to beat that chill in his core. After he had it full to where he needed, he had silently scooped Ethan up in his arms and brought him back to the bathroom.

Luckily for him, Ethan was able to stand up and half lean against the bathroom counter while he stripped him down. An audible sigh was heard coming from Ethan as Ben assisted him into sinking down into the bath water.

Ethan was stubborn about people touching his hair, Ben wasn’t sure why (he’d never bothered to ask, just kept from playing with his hair too much) but he knew that he was sensitive about his hair being messed with. So when he washed the grease away he made sure that his fingers didn’t tug too hard as he massaged his scalp gently. Ethan simply hummed, fingers dancing around the water a bit to entertain himself a little as he let Ben take care of him and wash him up. 

They sat there for a while, neither talking but it was a comfortable silence, a safe one. And once Ben dipped his finger into the water to find it had turned cold, he was helping Ethan out, wrapping him in a towel to get back to their room. 

Sweatpants were slipped onto his long legs, socks on his feet, and at the sight of the familiar Stanford red colored sweater Ethan let out a small grunt. This was the first sign of the regular Ethan that Ben had seen in days, and even though it was a dig at his alma mater, it brought a smile to his face as he tugged it gently over his head and fixed the sleeves around his hands. It was far too big for him, but it came in handy for times like this.

Once Ethan was successfully tucked back into bed, Ben had cleaned up around the room. Tissues, old shirts Ethan had sweat through, thermometer, Ben’s sticky notes he had been writing down the temperature and times on, among other things scattered around as the days dragged on.

Ben knew that a bath wasn’t going to solve everything that Ethan was going through instantly, by the time he had made it back to crawl into bed beside him, Ethan’s eyes were closed and a soft snore had taken back over his body. This time he did look pretty peaceful, the alarm clock on the dressed flashing with ‘ _ 1:48 am _ ’ when Ben’s eyes shut too.

That week of withdrawing from years of abusing pills was the worst week of Ethan’s life, and it did take him a long time and a lot of work before he felt like a normal functioning human being again. But it was also the best thing he’s done, and when he chucked those hidden pills later on he knew that this was the start of a new chapter in his life. A real future, with a new job, and Ben, and he was going to be sober for all of it.

**Author's Note:**

> for chris!!! the platonic ethan to my ben, i love u and i hope you really do enjoy this angst for our boys. thank you for always believing in me and my writing, and pushing me in the best way to get this done.
> 
> tumblrrr -> @connormurphweed


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